Posted on by rdlankes

Cute as an Atomic Bomb

OK, first you must watch this video. It is at the very least, adorable:

Now, reflect on what you just saw. A kid (10 maybe?) talking about using AutoCAD to make a 3D object. What’s more, talking about using an open source self-replicating 3D printer. Do not simply dismiss this as one extraordinary kid (though I’m sure he is). This technology is coming to your home and your children. We are entering the day when a 10 year old can design the next action figure, lego, or vehicle, and then email it to their friends. Not consumer, not producer, but participant in a creative community.

Imagine your dishwasher breaks and you call the manufacturer. Instead of mailing you the part, they email it to your printer. Are librarians ready for that? Imagine a member walking in to your library with the idea for the next great gadget. You can help them research it, make it, and then build a community around it. This is facilitating knowledge as much as giving them a “how to” book.

Thanks to Stephen Abram for the link, and thanks to Meg Backus who saw this coming years ago.

6 Replies to “Cute as an Atomic Bomb”

  2. Thanks for the mention. We too posted this video on the blog we’ve set up for IST600. In our class we are looking a lot at hackerspaces and 3D printing. We think that the public library is the right institution to implement 3D printing on a large scale introducing it to a broader public and allowing people to create and share what they create. Are librarians ready indeed. There has never been so much work for librarians to do. For a big list of mostly exciting project ideas from our class, see here): We’re borrowing The Public School model to democratize programming at libraries. We are collectively farming public land at NOPL (see here and here), and we’re organizing CSA drop offs on site. We are trying to run car and bike shares out of public libraries. We want different kinds of banks in libraries (like zero-interest microlending loans for education) and local currencies run out of public library systems. We are trying to get a broader range of physical objects in the catalog (material exchanges, tool shares, and just plain sharing stuff). We’re hosting classes on Arduino and Processing and as a first project a couple of us are setting up a network of self-watering, tweeting cacti (one cactus checks the weather in its native habitat and every time it rains in that place it’s prompted to drip water on itself and then tweet about it. Any amount of cacti can be set up to follow these tweets and then water themselves too. All the code, schematics and hardware design will be available for download, just add water). The only book length reading we’ve assigned is Program or Be Programmed. It’s right on. Thin too; half a plane ride’s worth of reading.

  3. One thing that Meg didn’t mention that I would like to add is that one of our students has taken on as her final project the task of getting a MakerBot and a 3D Scanner set up in one of the OCPL Libraries. Basically anyone could come in, scan/design their own object, and then print it out. The only cost associated would be the cost for the printer material (just like members of the public being asked to pay a dime per sheet to print on paper).

    We also Skyped in class with the author of It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up which specifically looks at the IP and copyright battles that lay on the horizon of 3D printing (It is also the best title for any white paper ever.)

    Dave, when you ask if librarians are ready for 3D printing point them to “It Will Be Awesome…” as the place to go to start thinking through what role libraries can have with this new technology.

    I’ve been thinking about it for several years and my conclusion is that this technology will make the industrial revolution look like small potatoes. Until recently various marxist philosopher’s have joked that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. No longer. 3D printing will be the end of capitalism. The whole world will be a public library. Everything will be as free as the latest pirated Justin Bieber album. Everything will be printable (well almost, real estate will still be real), food, clothes, architecture, everything. Why work a job you don’t like just to get the $ you need to buy food, clothes, rent, bills etc. when you can print them all out for free? You won’t have to work except on your own creative projects. We will be liberated to build on the humanities, to contest our ideas with one another, everyone will be an artist.

    People who are new to 3D printing often ask at this point where we will get the materials to build the printers or to feed the printers, won’t these cost money? No. We already have self-replicating printers. As for the material, the whole universe is made of matter (and void, can’t forget the voids). We can feed this matter to the 3D printers, the 3D printers will sort the matter into its constituent elements and these elements will then be recombined into new orders. It’s just like digestion. My body is made out of apples and pizza and mostly peanut butter cups just rearranged into new organs. 3D recycling and printing is just a mechanical form of digestion. It’s a form of digital alchemy. Feed landfills to the 3D recyclers and print out skyscrapers made of diamonds.

    You read it here first folks, its the end of capitalism and the birth of a truly democratic economy.

  5. One of our students flagged our attention to this post on MAKE about the need to transform public libraries into techshops and hackerspaces. I sort of feel like he’s stealing our thunder, but the point is to actually do it! I’d like to actually do it (and I think the iSchool should hire me full time to do it).

    It can be done, and it is the natural evolution for public libraries as an institution. A public library is a hackerspace avant la lettre, a democracy engine that empowers the public to hack the social codes they live in. Public libraries are not becoming obsolete, instead with the advent of 3D printing, DIY fabrication, and peer-to-peer sharing the whole world is becoming a public library. There has never been so much work for librarians to do as the current public libraries are the perfect institution to serve as a gateway to this future.

    The iSchool seems to look a lot to the business world for “innovation” and “entrepreneurship.” The business world is always behind the curve and they just co-opt the innovations that are happening elsewhere after the fact. All of this talk about “social entrepreneurship” or “civic entrepreneurship” is really just a way of trying to fit an alternative set of values into the present capitalist value system. We’re leaving that world behind and by the time the business world realizes it THEY will be the ones who are obsolete.

    If the iSchool wants to take the lead here what they really need is an ARTIST IN RESIDENCE. Artists and hackers are building this world now and the iSchool has a chance to catch this wave if it acts quickly.

    I’d like to work up a proposal to become the iSchool’s artist in residence and work on projects like this.

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